The Three Stooges on the Dock
Last night I had back to back auto loads (I jinxed myself by saying that FedEx doesn't focus on auto shipments), the first being transmission parts and the second being a special tooling both for a downed production lines.
The first one went as it usually does, everyone is working when I arrive and I am ignored. Not until I tell the supervisor of the dock that I am sent here because a entire production line is down and it would best to fit me in because the customer is spending a lot of money idling 300 people until I get there (don't know if that was true but it worked), she gets off her a** and moved to get me loaded fast. I got the dock assignment, back up into the dock and drop my dolly. I go back in and no one is around, dead silence except for the heater running on the dock. I walk around the plant and no one can be found until I stumble into the dispensary where the nurse tells me "oh didn't you know this is break time and they will be back in an hour" So I wait an hour, got loaded and went on my way with 6000 pieces of fancy transmission parts.
When I arrive at the plant, I am instructed to wait until a dock opens up and then take it in. I waited and then I dock my truck. I still have to wait until someone notices that there is a truck parked in the dock and then they stand there until I get over to unstrap the stuff for them. They can't get the forklift on the truck because of the step on my box so I push three containers to the edge. Finally I am unloaded and the parts are going into production but now I have to wait until I can find someone that can sign my paper work. There was another guy there that has waited 4 hours to get unloaded, but he was mad at the fact that they needed the parts so badly then made him sit while the line changes over to use the parts.
I get my paper work signed, a gate pass and I am out of there. I haul my truck over to another nearby plant and arrive just in time for lunch, an hour lunch. The shipping office (shipping trailer that is) has the shades drawn and a sign saying "out to lunch" in the window (too ironic isn't it?). So I sit and wait and wait, it is now an hour and a half. Finally someone comes to the window and opens the shade. I step up and the nice girl says "oh where have you been, they needed you to pick up this part a while ago". I just shut my mouth and went along for the ride. She explained to me what I needed to do; "take this ticket, drop it into the orange basket, not the red basket that looks something like orange but the orange basket then sign in and go sit at the table." Then she proceeds to tell me "at no time are you to go on the dock, you must always stay in the drivers area and when they finish loading, you must immediately pull your truck out of the dock and park it to secure your load." She then told me that I am taking a piece of tooling (she pointed over to a dolly with wheels that had a carefully padded and tie wrapped piece of aluminum tooling on it that supposed to have weighed 5000 lbs). She then called the dock supervisor to tell him to load me ahead of all the trucks (which there were 2 that arrived after me). Got a dock assignment and pulled my truck into the dock.
I walked back into the building and as I am passing the doors for the docks, I see there were three forklifts sitting near the dock door and one had the dolly with wheels on the forks. There were three guys huddled together and one was pushing the buttons on the dock controls. I watched as the ramp went up and down several times and tried to hear what was going on. It seems that they could not get the ramp to properly operate with my truck in the dock. The three were trying to get the ramp down farther than it was made to go, seeing my truck for some reason was lower than the other trucks in the wells (found out later why) and they were jumping on it, bringing up and down several times and even tried to drive a forklift on to it but nothing worked to lower it. All the while the dolly with wheels sat behind them on the forks. They worked on it for almost 15 minute, doing this or trying that to get the ramp down far enough at the same time trying to figure out what was wrong with the ramp. As we are all watching this spectacle of these three trying figured out what is wrong, the guy standing next to me mentioned that the dock is setup to raise the truck if needed, it seems he just retired from the place two years ago. As he is explaining this, someone who is driving one of those golf carts sees what is going on at the truck and whips around towards them. He stops his cart, walks over to the controls and pushes a button on the box the truck raises, which makes the truck level with the dock and the ramp then goes down with no problem. He gets back into his cart and drives away shaking his head.
The three were just looking amazed.
The group of three broke up and the guy with the dolly on wheels which is still on his forklift started to put it the truck, He stopped on the ramp, got off and looked up at the top of the box and his fork lift and then looked down on the floor of the truck, now there is another problem. He figured out that the height of the box was a problem, something that was obvious too all of us and his forklift was too high. He tried several times to put it into the box but could not get by the low ceiling of the box with the forklift. Now the other two notice this and came over, so again there are three forklifts at the end of my truck with three guys trying to figure out what to do. They all try to guide him to place the dolly on wheels on my truck but they can't figure out how to get past the low ceiling of the box. After ten minutes of this, here comes this guy again with the golf cart. He stops next to them, has the guy lower the forks with the dolly on wheels and he pushed the thing into my truck, gets back into his golf cart and speeds away shaking his head. The three all look at what he did and actually had the dumbest look on their faces.
We are all standing there watching this and know that there are problems at auto companies because of the unions workers but come on. The guy who mentioned the dock can be raise said it was worst than it is now and this was one reason why he left, to keep his sanity.
All of a sudden I get the dock supervisor telling me that I need to strap it down when it is in the dock (Duh), he realized it is on wheels and could just roll off the truck when I pull away. So I go onto the dock towards my truck, defying the instructions I got from the girl in the trailer. I get the dirtiest looks from the forklift drivers, ready to hear someone ask for my union card. I take my time strapping it in, making sure that the load bars are set, making sure that the dolly is strapped not the tooling (because of the 25 signs taped all over it saying fragile do not strap down) and then go back to the trailer to get my stuff signed... again with the looks from everyone as I walk on the dock. I go back to the shipping office, get my pass to get out of there and then have to go through signing the computer pad thingy what seemed like 25 times because the girl could not get the computer to work right. I finally got all my paper work and went to my truck to get out of there.
The guard looked at the paper work, and told me to go so I got out of there.
This is too much excitement for me.
Delivery was easy and rather cool. They had me pull into the press area of the factory, I drove right up to the machine and they unloaded it, unstrapped it from the dolly and put it on the machine as I sat there in the box of my truck in all in the warmth of the factory. I was tempted to ask them to let me stay there to sleep but ...
